


Five Times Phil Coulson Died (and One Time Clint Did)

by BonitaBreezy



Series: A Taste of Your Blood in my Mouth [3]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Complete, Death, Mentions of Pedophilia, Phil has a terrible habit of getting killed, THE DEATHS ARE NOT PERMANENT, THERE IS NO MAJOR CHARACTER DEATH BECAUSE THEY COME BACK TO LIFE THAT'S THE WHOLE POINT, Vampire AU, Violence, but it's okay because he's a vampire, but only mentions, little bit of gory description, non-permanent death, not so bad though, okay now that that's clear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-26
Updated: 2014-07-26
Packaged: 2018-02-10 12:25:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2025060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BonitaBreezy/pseuds/BonitaBreezy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Phil is definitely the kind of sacrifice himself to save others.  It's actually a really annoying personality trait, as far as Clint is concerned.  Luckily, Phil keeps on getting back up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Times Phil Coulson Died (and One Time Clint Did)

**Author's Note:**

> I've been having an awful time writing stuff lately, and I've heard tell that just killing characters off left and right is a good way to get back into the flow of writing. That's basically what I've done here, except I actually made a fic out of it. That is not the intended use, sir.
> 
> Disclaimer: It's 4:30 am and this thing is totally not beta'd, so if there are any terrible horrible mistakes (that I will probably see tomorrow when I read through it again and be super embarrassed by) I'm sorry. My bad.

** One **

“I hate Malaysia,” Clint grumbled, unzipping his tac vest as soon as they got to the safe house and letting it drop to the floor.  It was sleeveless, but also made largely of kevlar and leather.  Neither of those materials were particularly breathable, and Malaysia was hot _and_ humid.

“Agent Barton, if you could kindly keep your pants on,” Coulson said as Clint reached for his belt buckle.

“It’s hot, Coulson,” Clint complained, making his voice whiny in a way that he knew made Phil’s left eye twitch. “Besides, Natasha took off her pants.”

True enough, Natasha had easily slid straight out of her jumpsuit and was leaning up against the wall in practical black panties and a sports bra.  She was pressing as much of her skin against the wall as she could manage, and Clint suspected that the concrete felt cool.  He pressed himself up against the one catty-corner to hers and sighed happily as his skin soaked up the cool sensation.

“How is it that you two are our top field operatives?” Coulson sighed.  He looked really unimpressed by the pair of them, mostly naked and pressed up against the walls. “We may be in the safe house, but we should be prepared for anything.  Which means you two should be wearing clothes.”

“If you think I couldn’t kill a man more than a hundred different ways while naked, you don’t know me very well.” Natasha stared at him matter-of-factly and pressed her cheek against a new part of the wall.  Clint snickered.

Phil let out a long-suffering sigh, but didn’t push it any farther. “Fine. If you want to chance having to run through the Malaysian jungle in your underwear, go for it.”  Clint cheered and quickly divested himself of his pants, moaning happily when the slightly-cooler air hit his heated flesh.  He pressed himself back to the wall again, and for a moment everything was perfect.

“Why don’t you take off the jacket?” Natasha asked Phil after a few minutes. “You’ve got to be hot.”

“No, I’m fine,” Phil said, staring down at the tablet he’d dug out of his go-bag.  The weird part was, he actually did look fine.  Clint would have expected to see some sort of sweat on his face or at least around his collar, but Phil looked like he was enjoying a perfect breezy seventy degrees instead of a hundred and ten with five million percent humidity.  That bastard.

“Come on, Phil, you must be hot,” Natasha insisted, narrowing her eyes at him. “You’re only human.

For some reason, Phil huffed a laugh and said, “Yeah, right,” which was kind of a weird thing to scoff at.  He typed something quickly on his tablet, frowned, and then looked up at them.

“Let’s do a quick debrief and plan for tomorrow so you two can…” Before he could finish his sentence, the glass behind him shattered loudly, making both Clint and Natasha automatically dive for cover from the view of the window.  It took them a second to realize that blood was blooming quickly and wetly across Phil’s chest.  Their handler blinked once and looked down at the wound on his chest and then said, “Oh, fuck” and slumped forward onto the floor.

“Shit!” Clint was aware that his voice was little hysterical. “Shit, Coulson?  Phil?”

He didn’t respond or move, and there was so much blood, but Clint held childishly onto hope that he would be okay.

“Clint,” Natasha snapped, snapping her head in the direction of his bow and quiver that he’d unceremoniously dumped on the couch a few minutes before.  She had a knife in her hand, though where she’d pulled it from he didn’t know.  He wasn’t actually sure he _wanted_ to know.  He laid flat on his belly and army crawled to the couch, swearing loudly when a bullet hit the ground right next to him.  The front door burst open a second later, but the intruders were met by a snarling Natasha, so Clint didn’t worry about it.  He grabbed his bow and tossed the quiver over his back before scuttling toward the broken window, wincing when he had to crawl through the rapidly increasing puddle of Phil’s blood.

A couple quick glances out the window confirmed a sighting of the sniper, and he rolled up onto a knee, lined up the shot and fired, satisfied when the sniper’s body slid off the roof and hit the ground with a sickening thud and a few cracks of bone.  Not that the broken bones mattered, considering the guy had an arrow through his face.

Natasha had quickly dealt with the four guys who had come through the door and had apparently assessed that the danger was past for the moment, because when Clint turned away from the window he saw that she’d already flipped Phil on his back and pressed her fingers to his neck.  There was too much blood, and Clint knew, but he still looked at her imploringly.

“He’s dead,” she sighed.  Clint bit back a sob, forcing his emotions into a box because he couldn’t afford them.  They had to get out alive, and being a crying wreck wouldn’t help them.  Still, he pressed his fingers to Coulson’s pulse point as well, just to prove to himself what he already knew

As he did so, Coulson gasped loudly and his eyes snapped open.  Clint cussed in shock and scrambled back from what had most certainly been a dead body a few seconds before.  Natasha had her gun trained on him (it?) in seconds, and Clint felt a bit like an amateur because it took him a few seconds extra to get a shot lined up with his bow.

“Ugh,” Coulson groaned, rubbing his chest and sitting up like nothing completely insane was happening. “I hate it when I get shot in the lung.  It always feels weird until it heals up.”

Clint glanced at Natasha, who was glancing at him, and he could tell by the hard look on her face that she had something figured out.  Clint, however, did not, and he needed to know.

“What the actual fuck?” he demanded, his voice high and shrill.

Coulson looked up and seemed to realize that they were both training their weapons on him.  Instead of looking afraid, he just looked somewhat confused.  When he made to stand, Natasha glared at him.

“Stay where you are,” she said.

“What the fuck!” Clint reiterated, because really, what the fuck.

“Clint? Natasha?” Coulson said uncertainly.

“What are you?” Natasha demanded.

“I…” Coulson paused and looked between both of their faces, his brow crinkled in confusion. “I’m a vampire.  Didn’t you know?”

He said it like it was obviously something they should have known, like it was no big deal that they guy they’d been working with for years was a fucking _vampire_.  Like it was common knowledge that vampires existed and sometimes became secret agents.

“Fuck no, we didn’t know!” Clint snapped.  He didn’t think he could even question Phil’s truthfulness, because he had been very dead and now he was alive, so vampirism was as good an explanation as any.

“It makes sense,” Natasha said slowly. “I suppose I just never put the facts together.”

“Oh, it makes sense,” Clint said, staring at them both incredulously. “I’m so glad it makes sense to you because it makes no fucking sense to me.”

“I’ve killed his kind before,” Natasha said, shrugging. “I’ve worked with them too.  I suppose I let our closeness blind me to what he truly was.  It was sloppy on my part.”  She set down her gun because they were both still in their underwear and she had nowhere to put it.  Clint hesitated for a long moment, looking between the two of them.  If Natasha put down her weapon she didn’t think there was a threat.  And it was Phil.  Clint loosened his draw slowly and then slipped the arrow back into his quiver.

“I’m sorry, I thought you knew,” Phil offered, looking between them. “Everyone else at SHIELD does.”

“What, seriously?” Clint asked incredulously. “You’re some sort of creature of the night and everyone just knows about it except for us?”

“Okay, firstly, call me a creature of the night again and I’ll break your nose,” Phil growled, getting his feet. “Secondly, yes, apparently everyone knew but you two.”

Natasha looked furious about that, but instead of complaining she started getting dressed.  She moved quickly and efficiently, making sure she had all her weapons.

“As interesting as this new fact is, and as pleased as I am that you’re not dead, we really don’t have time for this,” she said. “There will be more coming after us.  We have to leave.”

“You’re right,” Phil said, frowning down at his blood-stained shirt in dismay. “Gather what you need and be ready to leave in three minutes.  We can finish this discussion when we’re in a safe zone.”

Clint wanted nothing more than to argue, but instead he started getting dressed.  He was kind of upset at being so out of the loop, and infinitely confused about the whole vampire thing, but mostly he was just so relieved that Phil was alive.

He could worry about the rest later.

** Two **

Clint had never been great at undercover work.  He was okay at it, he could do a few hours, in and out, but more than that was a bit beyond him.  He had his morals, and there were lines he wouldn’t cross, which made it difficult to convincingly interact with people who were only interested in their own self-gain, and didn’t care who got caught in the crossfire.  Natasha was a much better at undercover than he was; she could talk a mother into selling her baby.

Unfortunately, Natasha had been on a deep cover mission for three months when the job came from up above, marked to be put into action as soon as possible.  Since she was unavailable, the job fell on Clint.  It was supposed to be a relatively simple job: infiltrate a local weapons ring posing a small-time runner who wanted in on the big game and was offering a stockpile of Stark weapons as a buy in.  From there it would be simple: they’d let Clint in on their operation and he’d be able to go through their files and find their supply warehouses.

It all worked out just as planned until Phil came in with a black case with one of the Stark weapons SHIELD had been keeping around.  They were much harder to come by since Stark Industries had stopped dealing arms, and he knew it was as good as presenting them with the golden ticket to Willy Wonka’s factory.

“Wait a minute,” one of the hired muscle goons said as Phil lifted the case smoothly onto the table. “Wait, that guy, I know him!”

Phil didn’t exactly freeze, but his hands paused on the silver latches of the case.  He glanced disinterestedly at the goon.

“Good, you know each other,” Clint said quickly, putting on his most slimy used-car-salesman grin. “We’re like family already, huh?”

“Yeah, right,” the goon scoffed, drawing his gun. “He’s a spook!”

That was all it took for Clint and Phil to find themselves surrounded on all sides by jumpy men with guns trained on them.

“Wait a minute!” Clint cried, trying to salvage the situation.

“Wait a minute, he says!” Mocked Buroni, the leader. “You bring a fucking spook into my territory and you want me to hold it?  What about you, then, he your partner?  What are you, FBI?”

Clint glanced quickly at Phil, but Phil didn’t look at him.  It was clear he was calculating their chances, and the numbers weren’t coming out very well.  

“What, FBI?” Clint demanded. “Are you fucking kidding me, of course I’m not FBI.  I’ve got nothing to do with that guy, he’s just the Stark supplier, first time I ever met him in my life was two weeks ago!”

Buroni narrowed his eyes suspiciously at Clint and then flicked them over to Coulson.  Phil struck then, grabbing the handle of the case in one hand and swinging it wide, smashing in the face of the guy nearest to him.  He was kicking the gun out of the next guy’s hand just as quickly, but before he could make another move they converged on him and held him tight.  Clint tried not to panic as Phil was forced to his knees in front of him.  He didn’t understand why Phil had shown his hand so quickly instead of trying to talk it way out of it.

“So you say you’re not working with him, huh?” Buroni demanded, shoving the barrel of his gun against Clint’s chest.

“I’m telling you, I didn’t know he was a spook!” Clint insisted.  No matter what happened to Phil, he would most likely be okay.  Clint, however, was a bit more fragile, and right now his life depended on his cover staying intact. “But I do know where the rest of the weapons are!  We can still make good on our deal, Buroni!”

That seemed to give him pause.  He pulled the gun away from Clint’s chest and looked at him thoughtfully.

“You know where the rest of the Stark weapons are?  You can take my boys there to get them?” he asked.

“Yeah, no problem,” Clint promised. “I still want in on this.”  Buroni looked thoughtful, studying Clint’s face and then looking at Phil.  There was about thirty seconds of silence before he frowned.

“You know,” he said slowly, “I just don’t know that I can trust you.  How do I know you’re not FBI? How do I know that Clem Brixton is even your real name?  How do I know that that spook isn’t your partner?  Please, do tell me.”

“I…” Clint hesitated for a moment. “I don’t know.  Uh...give me a test or something. A way to prove myself!”  Buroni grinned, like he had been waiting for Clint to say that.  He thought that he had control of the situation, but he was wrong.  Clint knew what his test would be.  He had walked Buroni right into it.

“I want you to kill the spook,” Buroni said, handing Clint his gun.  Even though he knew that that was what Buroni was going to say, and even though he knew that Phil would be okay, Clint had to concentrate hard on keeping his hands from shaking when he took the gun.  He knew that Phil felt all the pain of dying, and so he couldn’t push his guilt away when he raised the gun and pointed it at Phil’s head.

Phil caught his eyes, his face calm, and Clint knew that Phil wouldn’t blame him for it.  He wouldn’t even be mad.  Honestly, it had probably been his plan from as soon as he’d been had.  That didn’t make it any easier.  Still, Clint took a quick, deep breath, lined up the shot, and fired.  He didn’t think he’d ever forget the way Phil looked with a shower of blood bursting from the back of his head.  He collapsed in a pile, his eyes wide and unseeing with a wet red hole between them.  It took everything Clint had not to puke.

“You three,” Buroni said, gesturing to the guys who had been holding Phil down. “Dump the body.  Brixton, you come with me.  Welcome to my crew.”

It took a lot of willpower for Clint to walk away as they dragged Phil’s body into some tarp, leaving a glistening trail of blood, bone, and brain matter on the floor behind him.  He didn’t know how long it would take Phil to wake up again.  Sometimes it was a minute, sometimes it was ten.  It depended on how extensive the damage was.  He couldn’t worry about Phil, though.  He had a job to do.

The vague nauseous feeling in the pit of his stomach didn’t go away until twenty minutes later when his comm buzzed quietly in his ear, and Phil’s voice spoke quietly to him.  It was one thing to know that Phil had always come back before, and something else entirely to be reassured that he had done so again.

** Three **

“Why does this always happen to us?” Clint hissed, leaning around the corner and firing off an arrow.  He ducked back around before he could see if he’d made the shot ( _please_ ) and was grimly satisfied to hear the tell-tale thud of a body hitting the floor.

“It’s because we always get the shit missions that no one else is crazy enough to take,” Natasha responded, though she sounded somewhat delighted at the idea. “They’re pretty much guaranteed to go wrong.

“Excuse you,” Phil said, offended. “I plan excellent missions.  They teach mission planning at the Academy based on my method.  I have back-ups for my back-ups.”  He grabbed a splintered piece of heavy wood from a table that had been shot-up nearby and swung it straight into the face of one of the goons who was dumb enough to try and confront them in their tiny place of cover.  The guy’s nose exploded in a shower of blood and Phil grabbed him by the hair and slammed his head into the wall, letting him go to slump to the ground.

“Well if you’re so amazing then why does this shit always happen?” Clint demanded.  They were stuck in a small room with minimal cover at the end of a hallway with only one exit.  There were ten armed guards between them and the exit, and no reliable way to get past them unscathed.

“I never had any problems before I started working with you two, you know,” Phil grumbled, firing around the corner. “It’s not my fault you’re both batshit and can’t stick to a plan.”

“Aw, Coulson,” Natasha simpered, batting her eyelashes and baring a shark-like smile at him. “You always say such nice things.”

“Okay, if you’re such an excellent planner, how the fuck do we get out of this?” Clint demanded. “I hate to say it, but I’m running low on ammo.  If we don’t get out of this room soon, I’ll be out.”

“Do you have a gun?” Phil asked, his eyes shooting to Clint’s quiver to count his arrows.  Clint knew exactly how many were in there, and it wasn’t enough.  He hadn’t had a chance to collect them as they were trying to get away, so even if he gathered the ones he’d already used to kill some of the guys in the hall, he’d have less than ten.

“Yeah, I’ve got a gun,” Clint said. “But it’s half empty.  Had to loan it to Tasha earlier, remember?”

“Fuck,” Phil breathed. He knew his clip was half empty as well, and he was already on his back up. “Tasha, how are you?”

“I lost my Glock earlier,” she said, looking a bit mournful. “I still have my Beretta.  And I’ve got some knives.”

“You have an extra magazine for the Glock?” Phil asked hopefully.

“Of course,” she said. “Standard issue?”  When Phil nodded, she dug into one of her many pockets and tossed the magazine to him.  He looked vaguely relieved, and Clint knew then that Phil wasn’t sure how they were going to get out.

The guys at in the hall had started firing again when they saw the magazine flash across the space of the doorway.  The whole back wall was riddled with bullet holes, and as soon as one of them were completely out cover, they’d look just as bad.

“Ooh,” Natasha said, her face lighting up just a bit. She pulled out a cylinder about five inches long. “I have a flashbang.”

“How the hell do you not know you have that?” Clint demanded.  He dared a glance around the edge of the wall but didn’t have time to line up a shot before the guns were going off again.

“I picked it up off someone earlier and forgot,” Natasha told him testily.            

“Children,” Phil said, his voice low and calm.  He had a gleam in his eye that said he had a plan, but somehow Clint didn’t feel relieved to see it.  He had a feeling he wasn’t going to like Phil’s plan. “Natasha, when I tell you, throw that out there.  While they’re disoriented I’ll break cover and take care of them.  When I tell you to go, then go.”

Clint narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “Just because they’re disoriented doesn’t mean they won’t still be shooting.”

“Yes, and I can keep going as long as the shot isn’t lethal,” Phil reminded him, even though Clint knew that.

“And if it is lethal, then what?” Clint demanded.

“Then you take care of the rest and get out,” Phil said this like it was simple, and Clint supposed that for anyone else it would be.  But this was Phil.

“And just leave you here?” He didn’t like it that plan at all.  Phil would come back at some point, and then he would be alone in enemy territory.

“I’ll be dead, they won’t be worrying about me,” Phil said. “This isn’t a suggestion, Agent Barton, it’s an order.”

“Over my dead…”

“It _will_ be over your dead body if you don’t do this,” Natasha spat at him. “And maybe mine too.  Phil’s a big boy, he knows what he’s doing.  If he’s down, we can’t take him with us and make it out.  He knows it, I know it, and you know it too.”

“I’ll be fine, Clint,” Phil promised, and Clint knew a lie when he heard one.  Still, he nodded, and Phil spared him a brief smile.

“Good.  Natasha, go.”

She pulled the pin and threw the canister into the hall, and then clamped her eyes shut and covered her ears.  Clint did the same, and a few seconds later he heard two loud bangs and another burst of gunfire.  When he opened his eyes he saw Phil jerking from the impact of bullets, but he kept going like he didn’t feel them, even though Clint knew he did.

He fired calmly at the disoriented guards, and Clint counted as he heard bodies drop.  They were down to two left standing when he decided that enough was enough and threw himself out from behind the wall, firing a shot as he went.  One of the goons went down, and the other Phil shot in the head.

“God damn it, Barton,” he snapped, turning to glare. “I told you to stay covered.”

“Well, I didn’t,” Clint said, and he wasn’t sorry because Phil was still standing.  Suddenly, one of the men that Clint had thought was dead sat up and fired his gun.  Phil moved quicker than Clint had ever seen, putting himself between the bullet and Clint.  It went into the back of his neck but didn’t come out again through the front.  Phil coughed, splattering blood in Clint’s face, and then fell to the ground, making choking noises.

“God damn it,” Natasha swore, shooting the guard in the face.  She then turned to Phil, shut her eyes for a half second, and then shot him in the head.

“What the fuck, Tash?” Clint spluttered, outraged.

“He wasn’t going to survive that wound, and I wasn’t about to let him choke to death on his own blood,” she stared hard at him, as if she was daring him to accuse her of being heartless.  “Let’s go.”

“Maybe we could wait a few minutes for him to wake up,” Clint said, even though he knew that would never fly.

“Absolutely not,” she said. “There are bound to be more of them around, and we don’t want to get caught here again.  Phil will meet us at the safe house.  We have to go.”

“Right,” Clint said reluctantly.  Phil would be pissed when he woke up if they were still standing there. “You’re right.  Let’s go.”  He took a gun from one of the goons, knowing that Phil would need his when he came around again.  He tried not think ‘ _if he comes around again_ ’ while they ran down the hall and left him behind.

Phil met them at the safe house two hours later.  Even though Clint had seen him come back time and again, he almost choked on his relief.         

** Four **

Ever since Phil had Marked Clint in a storage closet at work, Clint had easily been able to pick out which people were vampires and which were humans.  It wasn’t like he’d gained some sort of vampire gaydar or anything.  Phil’s Mark had done nothing to him except leave two little pinprick scars on his throat.  But those little pinpricks were the key.  Every time Clint passed by a vampire, their eyes would flick quickly to the right side of his neck when the Mark was, and then back to whatever they were doing.  It was almost like they couldn’t help but look.  Phil said that those little scars were practically flashing neon lights to vampires, and most of them would just look like it was a distraction, without even realizing they were doing it until it was already done.

Clint fidgeted uncomfortably as a little girl who couldn’t have been more than five locked her eyes on his neck for a long moment before looking up to his face.  She was holding the hand of a pretty woman who glanced back at the resistance the little girl was putting up.  Her eyes also immediately drifted to Clint’s neck before she seemed to remember herself and she forcibly looked away.  She tugged none-too-gently on the girl’s hand and continued hurrying down the street.  The little girl grinned at him as they went, her smile full of fang and her eyes looking more malicious than any little girl’s should.  Once they were around the corner out of sight, Clint let himself shudder with unease.

“Hey, are you okay?” Phil asked.  He came out of the coffee shop with two styrofoam cups in his hands just as Clint was finishing shaking off the heebie jeebies.  He handed Clint his coffee and took a drink of his own, his eyes slipping closed in pleasure.  Clint was almost sure that Phil was the only vampire on the planet addicted to caffeine.

“Yeah,” Clint said, taking a sip.  He grimaced slightly at the taste of burned milk, even though he should have been used to that by now.  No one in New York could make a decent cup of coffee. “Just saw a vamp.  Couldn’t have been more than five years old.”

Phil grimaced. “I hate it when they do that.  We do have a rules, as a society, and not Changing children is one of the big ones.  It’s a zero-tolerance policy, but that doesn’t mean people don’t still do it.  But usually they get...disposed of.  This one must have been very old.”

“I don’t know,” Clint shrugged. “She was super creepy, but other than that I have no clue.”

“She had to have been,” Phil assured him. “She couldn’t just walk around in the open if she wasn’t.  But if she was already made before the law came into effect, then they would have left her alone.”

“Why did they make a law about it?” Clint asked. “I mean, besides the fact that it’s super creepy and awful to do that to a little kid.”

“Children don’t take to the change very well,” Phil sighed. “I told you how it works, how the disease puts our organs in stasis from our last moment alive.  When that happens to children, it catches them in a state of early development.  At that age children are only capable of so much comprehension.  They get put in stasis and they can never truly get past the emotional stage of being that age.  They get older, they learn things, and they have plenty of life experiences, and they comprehend it with the brain of a five year old.  Most of them can’t handle it and they go feral.  The ones that manage not go feral are always kind of...off.”  Phil shuddered and frowned, and Clint wondered how many vampire children he’d met in his time.

“I don’t understand why anyone would Change a child in the first place,” Clint frowned.

“Sometimes people do it because they get Changed and can’t bear to leave their children alone,” Phil said, his face dark, and not because they had just walked under a sidewalk construction shelter. “But most of the time it’s pedophiles.  What’s better than a child who will stay a child forever?”

Clint’s stomach turned and he had to force himself to finish swallowing the coffee in his mouth, even though it suddenly tasted sour. “Those poor kids.”

“Yeah,” Phil agreed. “They try to keep it from happening.”  Clint shuddered again and tried to force himself to think about other things.  There was nothing he could do in a society that he didn’t belong to, and it would do him no good to get obsessed with it.

“I know,” Phil said quietly. “Believe me I do.  But it has been taken care of, I swear.”

Clint nodded. “Tell me something else,” he said. “Distract me.”

“Oh, um.  Jasper was talking about this new soul food place in Harlem that he insists we all have to try,” Phil said. “Apparently it’s…”

Whatever it was, Clint didn’t get to find out, because there was some shouting from above them, and then a large crashing sound.  He looked up out of shock, and saw the weight of the shelter roof buckle before the whole section gave a huge groan and collapsed forward.  He felt Phil hit him before he saw him move, and suddenly he was flying off his feet and hitting the ground hard a few feet away.  His head slammed into the sidewalk and he blacked out.

When he woke up people were still rushing towards them, so he couldn’t have been out for very long.  He sat up despite his newly pounding head and groaned out loud when he saw that the collapse had gotten Phil a piece of metal piping shoved right through his back and out the front.

He was propped up awkwardly on it, and most definitely dead.  People around him were screaming, a couple of construction workers were white-faced and wringing their hands, and Clint could see that several people had already called 911.  That was not going to work.

He yanked his own phone out of his pocket and hit the icon for SHIELD as he made his way to Phil’s side.  He wasn’t sure if he’d start healing around the pipe or not, and he didn’t want to find out.  If Phil woke up with a pipe shoved through him, they’d have to kill him again to get it back out.  Clint was all for not killing Phil, even if he had a tendency to pop back up again.

“Sir, I need you to back away!” a cop was saying to him, trying to hold him back.

“He’s my boyfriend,” Clint tried to explain, and when that didn’t work, he pulled his SHIELD badge out of his pocket and showed it to the man.  The cop’s eyes widened, and Clint was willing to bet it was because he’d thought, like most others, that SHIELD was only a myth. “We’re both SHIELD,” Clint said, his voice pitched low. “I’ve got to get him back to our headquarters, not to a regular hospital.  You understand?”

“Yessir,” the cop breathed. “What can I do?”

“Maybe go talk to the construction workers about safety regulations?” Clint snapped, even though it wasn’t the officer’s fault.  Still, anyone else but Phil wouldn’t come back from something like that. “I’ve already contacted someone to send along an ambulance.”

The cop nodded, turning on the group of construction workers, who were now standing clustered around a man in a shirt and tie who was talking quickly into his cellphone.  Probably to his lawyer.  Clint went anxiously to check on Phil, who didn’t seem to be showing any signs of coming back to life yet.  For once, Clint was relieved by that.  There were way too many witnesses around.

It was another minute and a half before an ambulance came roaring into sight with the SHIELD eagle emblazoned on the side.  The two EMTs inside winced when they saw the scene, but they got Phil up on a stretcher (quite awkwardly considering he was somewhat propped up by the pipe), covered him with a sheet, and maneuvered him back into the ambulance.  CLint climbed in with them.

“I always said those construction shelters were sketchy,” the woman who had remained in the back with Clint said. “This is Coulson, right?”

“Yeah,” Clint said. “He’ll be fine.  We’ve just gotta get the pipe out.”

She wrinkled her nose at the idea, but then squared her shoulders and nodded. “I’ll hold him down.”

She did up the stretcher restraints and then planted her hands firmly on Phil’s shoulders, looking a little pale but determined.  She was an EMT, she saw horrible things all the time.  She’d be fine.

Clint grabbed the pipe firmly in both of his hands and gave it a yank.  It slid out easily, lubed by blood and god knew what else, and Clint tried not to gag at the sight of Phil laying on the table with a hole in him looking like that guy from _Alien_.

By the time they got back to SHIELD HQ, Phil was alive again and making them laugh with jokes about the dangers of New York City.

** Five **

Everyone knows how it happened with Loki.

The Hulk cage, the destroyer gun, the spear through Phil’s back.  It took him four days to come back to life, and it took three months and countless bags of blood for all the damage to heal.  The only explanation that they can come up with is that the weapon was not of their world.  Phil’s not really the same, after.

Clint never forgives himself for getting taken and letting it happen in the first place.

** +1 **

Clint woke up with a bad feeling the moment before the door to his room got thrown open.  He had his gun in his hand aimed and ready to fire before he was finished sitting up all the way.  He paused when he saw Bobbi Morse in the doorway, still dressed in a labcoat.  She was the only other SHIELD agent on this under-cover mission with him, and she was really the brains of the operation.  He’d been sent to be her backup while she figured out what sort of horrible biological engineering was going on in the North Korean government’s science division labs.

They’d discovered that it was supposed to be some sort of airborne pathogen that would supposedly bring the world to it’s knees, and they’d been assigned to stay on so that Bobbi could do her science-y best to covertly keep them from developing anything that was actually dangerous.  Clint was mostly just there to act as muscle.  Even though Bobbi, as a SHIELD agent, was perfectly capable of taking care of herself, Clint was extra insurance.  He had been sent with the knowledge that he could and would easily lay his life down in order to make sure she got out alive.  Because five years ago, Clint had become a vampire, and he was capable of coming back from almost anything they could throw at him.  Bobbi?  Not so much.  And she was the important part of this mission.  She had all the knowledge and know-how.

“What’s going on?” he demanded. They weren’t supposed to be seen together.  It would be suspicious if one of the scientists spent a lot of time around one of the grunts.

“I don’t know what’s happened, but something is very wrong,” Bobbi said, her voice low but urgent. “I was up late, looking into some files when all of a sudden there were all these flashing warning signs on the monitor, so I looked, and it looks like someone dumped all of SHIELD’s database onto the internet.  All of it, Clint.  Including the list of active undercover agents.”

“Fuck,” Clint said, jumping out of bed and rushing to shove his feet in shoes. “Fuck.  Was anyone else with you? Did anyone else see?”

“No, not with me.  But those alerts...someone elsewhere was bound to have seen it.”

“We’ve got to get out of here,” Clint said, grabbing his go-bag and tossing it over his shoulder.  He’d made sure to keep food and water stocked in it, in case they needed to disappear quickly. “Do you have a weapon?”

“No,” she said, looking annoyed. “Some of the scientists aren’t here by choice.  They don’t want us having guns.”

Clint grabbed his extra from it’s place in the bedside drawer and gave it to her.

“Okay, let’s go,” he said.  He glanced into the hallway, glad to see that it was empty, and gestured for her to follow him.  They rushed through the hallways that had become very familiar to them in the past few months, and for a moment Clint thought they might make it out fairly easily.  There was a weak spot in the security that he’d found the first week they were there, and he’d marked it as a place to make an escape, if needed.  

They were almost halfway there when the klaxons started sounding.

“Fuck!” he said, picking up the pace. “Faster, Morse, we’re almost there!”

They rushed around a corner and came face to face with three guards with guns glowering at them.  Clint didn’t stop to pretend like they weren’t the spies, he just raised his gun and fired two rapid shots.  Two of the guards went down dead, and Bobbi shot the last one before he could.

“Nice,” he told her, and she grinned at him.  They kept moving, but he knew the sound of gunshots would definitely draw people towards them.  If they could just get to the right room, they could get out the window and through the gap in the fence before anyone really knew where they’d gone.  Once they were out, it was another matter.

Something huge was going down at SHIELD, something big enough that Fury had made the decision to let all the undercover agents die, and Clint knew there was no one coming for them.  If everything was released, they couldn’t even go to the safehouse.  Their only hope was contacting Phil or Tasha.  Clint knew they would come for him, if they could.

But first they had to get out of the facility.  They came across more guards they had to kill in the hallway before the right room, and when they got there the door was locked.  Clint considered it for a moment before deciding to just shoot the lock off.  People were coming after them anyway.  It was better to make a bit of noise than just wait around to be found.

Clint was pleased to see that the window latch was still broken when they got in there.  He could hear boots running down the hall, and he knew they were running out of time.  He took off his bag and gave it to Bobbi and then gave her a boost so she could reach the high window.

“There’s a sat phone in the bottom of the bag,” he said as she pushed the window open.  It stuck a bit, but she gave it a bit more force and it wrenched open with a shrieking noise. “Call the first number listed.  Tell him what’s going on, where you are.  If he doesn’t answer call the second number and do the same thing.  Tell them ‘Budapest’, okay?  You got that?”

“Budapest,” she repeated, nodding.  She climbed out the window and, from there Clint could only hope she’d be okay.  He grabbed the window sill and was pulling himself up when the door burst open.  He didn’t even have time to turn around to try and defend himself before he was met with the unmistakable pain of a bullet to the back.  Good thing he only felt it for a few seconds before he died.

* * *

 

Clint woke up in clean linen sheets with the buzz of aircraft sounding around him.  The whole room smelled like Phil, and he relaxed.  The door opened a moment later and Phil came in, immediately rushing to Clint’s side when he saw that he was awake.

“How long have I been out?” Clint asked, and Phil smiled at him, clearly relieved.

“A few hours.  You came back to life before we found you, but you’ve been unconscious.  I’d forgotten how much death takes out of you when you’re young.” Phil kissed his forehead and then the Mark on Clint’s neck.

“I was worried about you.”

“I’m okay,” Clint assured him, sitting up as if to prove it. “Where’s Morse?”

“She’s in the common area with Skye and Fitzsimmons,” Phil assured him. “She’s okay.  She called in on the sat phone and used your code word.  Luckily we were nearby.  I insisted on finding you, and fortunately they had just piled all the dead bodies in a heap outside the compound.”

“Yeah, fortunately,” Clint snorted. “This vampire gig is rough.  You never told me it was so exhausting to get killed.”

“Yes, well,” Phil said, shrugging. “I’m a lot older than you are.  I don’t find it tiring.”  He ran a hand through Clint’s hair and then cupped his cheek, like he was making sure that Clint was still okay, even though he’d pulled the dying thing on Clint too many times to count.  

“Hey,” Clint said, his voice softer.  He knew the irrational panic that his lover wouldn’t come back this time, even though he always had before.  Phil wasn’t as used to experiencing it, especially because this was the first time Clint had actually done it since the Changing. “I’m okay, Phil. I promise.  Thanks for coming for me.”

Phil’s eyes softened as he looked at Clint, and he pressed a kiss to his forehead again. “Oh, Clint.  I’ll always come for you.”

And somehow Clint knew that he would.

**Author's Note:**

> For those of you wondering, the timeline order goes likes this:
> 
> Death 1  
> Death 2  
> Death 3  
> Marked  
> Death 4  
> the Bite of Intent  
> Death 5  
> +1


End file.
